Bing Predicts: First four games of March Madness 2018

Bing Predicts: First four games of March Madness 2018

When the fiery embers of TBS’ abysmal Selection Sunday finally settled — in front of an out-of-place live studio audience — fans were at last presented with this year’s field of 68 teams. From No. 1 seed Virginia to No. 68 Texas Southern, the path to a national championship is just a handful of wins away.

As millions of fans rush to fill out their brackets, just remember this: Nobody knows what they’re doing. Not your friends, or the person who won last year’s office pool, and certainly not you. Pouring over research is fun and can be insightful, but, unfortunately, chasing that perfect bracket will prove to be a fruitless effort yet again.

There is, however, honor in the pursuit of a dream. To that end, the folks at Bing Predicts have put their information to use. With the help of web activity data and social sentiment — as well as historical player, team and game stats — Bing has predicted the outcome of each NCAA tournament game. The data experts have assigned a percentage value to indicate the level of confidence in each pick, beginning with Tuesday’s First Four action.

Stacker will lean on this data to give all you bracketologists a leg up on the competition, complete with a breakdown of each showdown. We’ll start with the game Bing sees as being the closest, followed by the biggest perceived mismatch.

Note: Also included with game predictions is the opening line to each game, courtesy of Vegas Insider.